In the shop gallery: Nina Johanna Christensen

Swedish handmade and mouth-blown glass designed and made by Nina Johanna Christensen.

Nina is a glassblower, designer and artist from Malmö who works with both small-scale production lines and unique works.

In her work, she strives for simplicity, a lack of artifice, and rawness. She is inspired by different parts of the physical work process of the craft of glassblowing, such as the movement when she spins the hot glass on the pipe and the movement of the molten glass when it is hot and liquid.

Nina has her atelier at BLANK studio in Malmö, where she works with concept development and packaging. The actual glassblowing is done at Glashyttan Glasverk in Varberg.

Nina is fascinated by the organic and living aspects of the hot liquid glass. These are the properties which convinced her to start working with glass, which are constantly present in the hot work, but which very often disappear and are disregarded in the finished glass objects. In her work with her everyday service A Material in Motion and her small vases Grow, her focus has been on trying to retain a sense of movement in the glass pieces – as if they are still in motion and are shaped when someone holds, sees and uses them.

“Maybe by leaving clear traces in my products of the physical processes of the craft, I can tell the story of how they came into existence“, she says. “The conditions for being able to blow the glass at all – the tools, the high temperatures and the furnaces that are needed – are not anything I take for granted. I want to produce useable, beautiful objects in glass and at the same time pass on the story of this ancient craft.”

Nina supplies glass to such places as Norrgavel’s shops, Tambur Sthlm, Wanås Konst Center for Art and Learning, the Bergius Botanic Garden in Stockholm, Champagne Pony Club in Denmark and Nordstil in the Netherlands.